


Time Immeasurable

by PrideGifts (Laeviss)



Series: Wranduin! [1]
Category: Warcraft - All Media Types, World of Warcraft, World of Warcraft - Various Authors
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Ardenweald AU, M/M, Reunions, Sharing an Afterlife, Wranduin Gift Exchange 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:14:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28406808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laeviss/pseuds/PrideGifts
Summary: One evening, a fiery seed appears in Anduin's grove. The longer he cares for it, the more attached he becomes, until he realizes his connection to the spirit within runs far deeper than he could have guessed.
Relationships: Wrathion/Anduin Wrynn
Series: Wranduin! [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1756381
Comments: 25
Kudos: 45





	Time Immeasurable

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Pinkelephant42](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pinkelephant42/gifts).



> Written for the Wranduin discord Secret Santa event! I hope you like it, Cammie!! ♥

Anduin had just finished trimming back an unruly vine when he saw it. About the size of a nut, small enough for him to cup in his palms, the seed that had sprouted between the roots of a nearby tree glowed an ethereal crimson. Opalescent fire churned in its depths. 

It was like nothing else in the grove, throbbing with strength extending deep into the earth. Anduin stared, transfixed, shuffling through the grass with his deep blue eyes trained upon it. 

Setting aside his sheers and shifting until his hooves fit neatly in the gap at the base of the tree, he leaned down, resting his hands upon it, and smiled. His heart leapt, and he closed his eyes. 

“Hello,” he murmured. “And who might you be?” 

In response, the power within the seed swelled. When he cracked open an eye, he realized the halo surrounding it had grown, spilling between his fingers and casting his arm in an auburn glow. 

A spirit reached out to greet him. Their anima touched. The sylvar lowered his gaze, and the seed murmured. An image rose, unbidden, to the forefront of Anduin’s mind.

He was in a cave, somewhere deep in the bowels of a tumultuous world. From every side of the room, lava flowed, spilling from cracks in the ceiling into pools, popping and churning at every corner of a stone dais. But for some reason, he wasn’t afraid. There was no threat of wildfire or destruction. There was only a deep, grounding strength keener than anything that sylvar had experienced. 

Gently cupping the seed, he stroked his long thumb across its surface. When he gazed into it, he could feel the warmth of that fire radiating upon his face. He could feel eyes, so many eyes upon him, and the dark forms of thirty or so scaled creatures huddled together. 

A few, he realized, were crying. One of the smallest had crawled forward and lowered its head in a bow. Something tugged at his heart before sinking to the pit of his stomach. Wetness gathered beneath his long lashes, but the ache that swelled within him wasn’t sorrow or regret, but contentment, the joy of a life well lived…

Off to Anduin’s left, something stirred in the grass. He wrenched his gaze from the seed, pressing back his shoulders and hastily wiping his eyes with his palm. Beside a bush at the vine-draped entrance to his grove, a wolf crouched. His white fur shone like the moon in the dark clearing, and upon his brow a crown of stars twinkled and danced. 

Anduin’s expression softened. Reluctantly removing his hands from the seed, he rose and strolled to greet his evening visitor. 

“Lo’Gosh.” He nodded. The spirit, who had joined with his father’s soul in life, lowered its maw to the earth and rumbled. Once he had closed the distance between them, he ran his fingers carefully between the wolf’s ears. They flicked. Its crown cast flecks of light across Anduin’s furry haunches, and the tension in its spine softened.

After a few more strokes, its glittering tail swished across the dirt and it panted, content, against Anduin’s wrist. 

“You don’t need to guard me, you know,” he teased, though a smile twitched at the corners of his lips. “It’s been quite some time since the last drust attack, and besides, I know how to defend my grove.”

Despite the protest Anduin always gave, it wouldn’t deter the spirit, and, if he were to be wholly honest, he didn’t mind. The wolf’s keen watch pulled him back to a different time, to his father’s broad shoulders draped with a white fur stole. They had argued. Anduin had _insisted_ he could take care of himself, but then his father’s voice had broken and he had stared up into his gray eyes and seen…

Lo’Gosh interrupted his thoughts with a gentle huff, nuzzing his hand from fingertips to wrist. Anduin’s chest tightened, and he cast one last look over his shoulder towards the fiery seed, before straightening and exiting the grove with the wolf at his side.

* * *

Some time later, as he knelt with his hands splayed on either side of the seed’s swelling exterior, he felt a jolt that rushed through his veins and into his racing heart. His shoulders straightened. His chest rose; a swelling pride he couldn’t place but he could _feel_ took shape within him, and he bent forward until his cheek rested against the seed’s smooth shell. 

Abandoning his calculations and quieting his mind, he focused on the point where their anima joined. Emotions became colors, and colors became imposing silhouettes cut against a starry sky.

Rather than feeling daunted, however, the spirit inside Anduin’s seed approached them. The corners of his lips curled into a grin, and when he bowed, thick, curly locks swung forward off his shoulders. 

The largest of the figures cleared his throat, rising from a stone throne. His eyes, brilliant and sharp in the power of their glow, softened around the edges. He smiled, and boomed, lifting his hand. “So it was you, Earth-Warder? You were the one who saved my daughter from Demodios?”

“Indeed,” a surprisingly musical voice left the spirit’s lips. 

The titan before him tilted his chin, stroking his hoary beard between his fingers. “Perhaps we were wrong to underestimate you. You have truly proven yourself against your father’s legacy.”

“As has always been my goal, Aman’Thul. I have only ever wanted what is best for Azeroth—”

“So you have, Earth-Warder.” Anduin’s heart leapt to his throat. His own smile widened to where it ached on his face, but he didn’t care. Hugging the seed to his chest, he basked in its fire, and in the smell of brimstone and earth building beneath his nostrils. 

Squeezing closed his eyes and staring up into Aman’Thul’s face, he beamed. Suddenly, a wreath fluttered onto his head, settling in the blond hair between his horns. Someone giggled. His eyes flew open, and he glanced up to where Shimmerfly hovered beneath the lowest bough of the tree.

Giggling and flapping her wings, she sent a shower of light to the earth around him. “Just what I thought!” She exclaimed. “I knew Nightshade would look good on you!”

His smile didn’t falter, the final images of the vision still lingering on the edges of his thoughts. Reaching up, he gave the crown on his head a gentle pat; the softness of the petals and the curl of the leaves they were nestled in brought him back to the present moment: to the fairie darting above him and the twinkling lights scattered across the roots to his left and right.  
“Hello Shimmerwing.” He directed his smile overhead. “What brings you to my garden this evening.”

“Looking for you, mostly!” She exclaimed, careening in an arc between the boughs. “Lady Moonberry and I were having a disagreement. Which faun would look best in Nightshade? She said Ara’lon, but I knew it was you!”

Through his grin, he let out a soft chuckle. Lowering his hand from his brow, he brought it to rest in his lap, nestled between his abdomen and the curled end of the auburn seed. The gesture drew the small faerie’s attention, and she fluttered down to the root on his right, settling at its highest point with her small feet dangling and her blue wings folded behind her. 

Her eyes lit up, and a tiny cry of surprise escaped her. With a kick of her feet, she bounced, and exclaimed, “Oh, another seed! This one’s red! When did it arrive?”

“A few days ago, I think.” Anduin furrowed his brow. Time ran differently in Ardenweald, and it always proved difficult to keep track of days when the stars never left the sky. It reminded him of somewhere else he had been, somewhere deep in the back of his mind, but try as he might he couldn’t piece together _why_ the two places were similar. Instead, he settled for doing what the faeries did: positioning one event among others that happened around the same time. 

“A little after Lenari ferried her seed to the Heart of the Forest,” he murmured, brushing the tip of the seed with the back of his long fingers. “And around the time Lady Moonberry’s troupe put on that play about the drusts’ defeat at Tirna Scithe…”

“Ah! I see!” Shimmerwing bent forward, gazing at the seed’s amber surface with rapidly widening eyes. Fire crackled within its depths, casting an orange glow across her pale face. With a squeak, she bounced back and beat her wings so hard she dumped glitter onto the ground beneath her. It dusted the loamy, brown expanse and drifted between grassy tufts at the foot of the tree, twinkling behind each blade like insects signaling for their mates. 

Anduin watched it for a moment, running his hand up and over the seed, until he had it cradled against his chest. It warmed his skin and fur and tugged at his heart for reasons he couldn’t quite place. That voice—that musical tenor with a certain authoritative flair—he had heard that voice, somewhere, sometime…

“Don’t worry, Anduin!” Shimmerwing scooted up the branch to face him, her lips drawn in a thoughtful line. “You don’t need to hide it from me. I was just surprised, is all! I haven’t seen one like that for a really long time.”

“Oh. Ah, no, that isn’t it,” he hurried to explain. Glancing down at the seed under his bent forearms, he smiled a softer smile, and continued at a lower pitch. “Sorry, Shimmerwing. I didn’t mean to go quiet on you. I was just thinking about something.”

“About what, Anduin?” The faerie prompted.

Smoothing back his blond hair and readjusting his crown, he stared down at his reflection on a glassy spot on the seed’s exterior and watched his own mouth form the words: “I’ve been having visions, and I’m trying to figure out why the voice inside sounds so _familiar._ ”

“Familiar _how,_ Anduin?” Shimmerwing gave her feet another pattering kick, curling her tiny hands around the top of the root and using it to push closer.

He shot her a smile and shifted to face her. With his left elbow propped lightly against the seed, he rested the side of his torso against it and spread out his hooved feet in the grass to his right. Taking a moment to collect himself, he inhaled, and murmured, “There’s just something about it. It’s rich and regal, but also mischievous and sly in a way I can’t place. It isn’t the voice of a trickster, but it isn’t a god, either. Sometimes it feels large and powerful, but other times it’s delicate and smooth. It’s as if the massive and slender bodies exist simultaneously. I don’t know. I just know that, when he speaks, there’s something that makes me—”

“Hey, Anduin?” Shimmerwing cut in. When his eyes refocused, he found her grinning back at him, her wide eyes dancing and her feet beating happily at the air beneath her. 

He cleared his throat, pushing up and tucking his knees closer to his body. “What was that, Shimmerwing?”

“Oh,” the faerie giggled. “I just wanted to say you’re blushing.”

“Oh.” His hand flew to his cheeks. He hadn’t noticed the heat climbing up the back of his neck, but when his fingertips grazed his skin it was warm to the touch. Something fluttered high in his chest, and when his thoughts turned to that voice, his mouth went dry and his tongue slackened against the floor of his mouth. 

The fingers of his hand resting against the seed templed and clenched. Why would he react like this, to something like this? He was a caretaker. This was his seed. He shouldn’t be tensing or feeling or _blushing_ about the being the Winter Queen had left in his care. 

As he scolded himself, Shimmerwing shifted closer. She stretched out a single finger and poked the tip of his nose. Caught off guard, he snapped back, and she giggled, louder, until the sound rang off the boughs overhead. 

With a broad grin, she cupped the tip of his chin and gave it a playful shake. “I think Anduin has a crush on his seed!” She proclaimed. Before he could protest, she followed it up with an even louder, and smugger, “And I think Anduin’s seed will think he looks great in Nightshade, too!”

* * *

One evening, Anduin arrived to find that the seed had outgrown its place at the base of the tree. It bulged against the roots at either side of its thickest point, and poked out a foot or two into the grass clearing in the center of the grove. When Anduin approached, he realized that a clump of dry leaves had been trapped beneath it. 

Lowering to his knees, he crawled forward and worked his hand under its curled tip. The leaves crunched and crumbled under his fingers, and he did his best to sweep what remained of them off to the side. He then set to work digging out a trench around the seed that would allow it to be freed and ferried to the Heart of the Forest when its time finally came.

Which, he thought to himself as he dusted off his palms on his haunches, would likely be sooner rather than later. It had to be nearly the length of his body by now, and whatever grew within stirred with greater power than before. The fires hidden in its depths crackled and churned. A rumble passed from the storm within to the ground beneath Anduin’s bent legs. 

Drawing back his shoulders and regarding it with an appraising look, he smiled, and his heart swelled. He had thrown himself into caring for this spirit, and soon he’d see the fruits of his labor pay off. The spirit would be returned to the world of the living, its power, once more, in service to the wilds. It was a beautiful thought, but for some reason, it failed to satisfy him.

His grove would be empty without the fiery seed. The roots of his tree would yawn in its absence, and in an instant the heat that permeated the ground beneath him would be stripped away. 

He would take the journey to the Heart of the Forest in silence, bow drawn at his waist and eyes downcast, as the Night Fae fluttered around him, whispering and giggling and scattering colorful dust behind their wings. He’d be an outsider to it, mirthless at his own party, plagued by sorrow, loss, regret…

...What in the Winter Queen’s name had gotten into him?

With a sigh, he scooted closer to the seed. After inspecting his hands for dirt, he rested them atop the object’s slope, memorizing its glassy exterior wrapped in vines, and the quiver of power passing through it.

A faint tremble became a rumble, and a rumble a whisper. Leaning forward, he rested his cheek upon it and closed his eyes. The same voice from before whispered in his ear, before it was swept away by a rush of wind sweeping up his back.

When he blinked open his eyes, he was on a cobblestone street, surrounded by gray balustrades caked in barnacles and brine. The street disappeared under an arch and reemerged at a gate to a garden. Gnarled tree trunks lined the dirt path on the other side of the entrance. 

After unlatching a rusty lock and easing open the door, he stepped over a clump of weeds. His pace quickened around a large rock and past a moss-covered column to where a stone figure cast a shadow across the earth.

He stopped and lowered his head. After readjusting the object he clutched in his hand, he drew in a breath and closed his eyes. Something about the air rushing over his tongue tasted familiar: cool and briny, with a faint hint of leaves dusted in morning dew.

Of mornings spent on his balcony with a cup of coffee clutched in his hands, as the wind blew off the harbor and swept through the grounds of the Keep. The Keep. 

The Keep. Stormwind Keep with its Lion Seat, where the High King sat. High King Anduin Wrynn, son of Varian Wrynn, his father…

Oh. 

Another cool breeze rustled the leaves overhead. The boughs groaned, but the spirit through which he saw didn’t lift his gaze. Instead, he took a careful step towards the statue and pursed his lips. 

An ache ebbed at the edges of his heart, but it didn’t swell to a pang. Whatever loss he felt had been dulled by time. He bowed, and thick hair tumbled over his shoulders. When he rose, he smoothed out his coat and approached the foot of the statue. 

On its base stood a pair of carved boots, discolored and cracked by the elements. They gave way to pants striped up both sides, which disappeared under a coat and lion buckle belt. 

A prickle started at the base of Anduin’s neck, but the spirit felt nothing of it, not even when another breeze ruffled his hair. Calmly and with his shoulders drawn back, he approached, lifting his gaze to the statue’s face, shrouded in shadow, until a beam of light broke through the canopy above.

Anduin froze. His own human visage, lined with age and concern, stared down at him—at the spirit. 

The spirit flashed a sad smile and readjusted the object clutched in his palms. When he placed it at the base of the statue, it rustled. A few white petals broke free and scattered upon the dais.

It was a wreath, Anduin realized with a pang. A mourning wreath, like the ones he had placed on his mother’s and father’s graves while he was alive. The spirit, whoever it was, had come to mourn _him_ , at his tomb, in the crumbling wreckage of what had once been his city. 

How many years had passed? How had his memory lived on when the walls and statues and paths had been reclaimed by the wind and sea? A sob crawled up his throat and threatened to escape into the seed pressed against his lips but then the vision shifted. The spirit stepped back and cast his gaze towards his curl-tipped boots, then at his hands trembling in front of him.

Dark bronze hands with long nails, each coming to a gold point that glittered even in the shade of the memorial standing before him.

Everything crashed over Anduin at once. Moments spent huddled together by the fire. Sipping tea, playing a game with white bone tiles adorned with colorful shapes. Holding hands at dusk by the sea. Sharing a private kiss under an arch, and then a public one on the front steps of the cathedral. 

He had cupped his lover’s face in his fingers and stared into the churning red depths of his eyes. It was the same glow, the same power, that moved under his hands and trembled through the earth beneath him.

It was Wrathion. The Black Prince. The love of his life.

_Wrathion._

He choked on his gasp, tightening his grip on the wildseed growing beneath him. As if in response, the flames within crackled and swelled, bathing Anduin’s face in their glow. When he blinked, tears rolled down his cheeks, and when he inhaled, his breath hitched and his fur ears flagged against his horns. 

Digging his fingers into a gap in the outer shell, he clung to it, and let the warmth from within consume him. He sat beside it for time immeasurable, until the soft patter of Lo’Gosh’s paws in the grass drew his attention, and the soft head of the wolf landed in his lap with a protective growl. 

Only then did he part from the seed, and only with much reluctance. When he reached the road, he glanced back and ached for the heat of the dragon resting within. Maybe just this once, just this one time, he would be relieved of his duties, and the seed could grow in his grove forever.

* * *

Despite all his most earnest wishes, when he returned to the clearing in the woods the seed was gone. His heart leapt to his throat, and his hoof caught on the root of the tree in his haste to step over it, sending him stumbling into a gap marred by drag marks. 

The grass had been pushed aside, torn up in spots by whatever had wrenched the soul from its tree. Whoever had done this had done it in haste, with little regard for the spirit nor the nest Anduin had so carefully crafted to house him.

Blinking and steeling himself for a fight, he whirled on his hooves, pushed off from the mud, and sprang forward. A figure waiting at the grove door stopped him in his tracks. 

“Oh, Anduin, you’ve changed,” a familiar voice murmured. A smile twitched at the edge of each word. 

The sylvar froze, his hands falling limp by his sides and his dark blue eyes widening. The figure stepped forward into the light of the moon; it cast an ethereal glow about him like a halo framing his thick dark curls. Gems twinkled like stars down the front of his coat, and upon his shoulders sat silver pauldrons radiating a bright power of their own. 

It took a few tries to get his tongue to move, but when it finally did, Anduin shot back, with less confidence than he would have liked, “And you haven’t changed a bit.”

“The true benefit of a conjured form, I suppose.” Wrathion regarded him with a long look, starting at his hooves and moving up to the tips of his furry ears. They twitched under his stare; Anduin quickly averted his eyes. 

The dragon’s voice caught in his throat, jumping a note or two when he finally continued, “No need to look so shy, my dear, really. It suits you. Honestly, this whole place suits you—”

“Wrathion…” Anduin’s hooves thudded against the dirt as he sprung forward, heart racing and heat rising to his pale cheeks. When he reached the dragon, he wrapped his arms around him. The other man yielded, pressing his face to his chest and heaving a sigh.

His breath was warm against Anduin’s skin, like steam coming off a pool fed by fires blazing beneath the earth. When he pressed a hand to Anduin’s back, his claw-like fingers caught him and held him in place, as they had so many times before, when they lay entwined in each other’s arms. 

He nuzzled the top of his curly head and whispered half-formed greetings into his ear. No matter how dim his memory had been when the seed first arrived in his grove, with Wrathion in his arms their entire life story unfurled before him. Every memory, every moment caught in the sieve of their embrace. From the charcoal scent of the dragon’s skin to the heat of his soft lower lip, Anduin knew it all. 

He gave him a squeeze, which Wrathion returned. They held each other in silence, until, with a pang in his chest and an ache building at the corners of his eyes, Anduin murmured what he feared they both were thinking:

“Thank you for coming to say goodbye before you go.”

Wrathion tilted his chin to look up at him. His crimson eyes all but consumed his face. “What in Titan’s name do you mean by that?”

“I mean—” Anduin hated the strain what he spoke left in his voice. “Before you’re reborn in the mortal world, as an Aspect, or a god…”

The dragon’s features contorted. Anduin braced himself for whatever was coming, but wasn’t prepared for the high, musical jingle of a laugh that poured from his lips and rang off the boughs overhead. He stared. 

Wrathion withdrew one hand from his back to unfurl it and shrug at his side. “As gratifying as that sounds, I really don’t think it necessary.”

“But you’re—”

“I _was_ an Aspect, yes, and under me the Black Dragonflight flourished. I defeated a void lord, discovered the Dragon Isles, babysat dear Ebyssian’s grandchildren far more times than I can count. I have earned a bit of rest, I think. I am sure they can manage without me.”

Anduin didn’t dare let himself believe what the dragon was saying. He knew his charge. He had said his farewells enough times to know he couldn’t hold back a soul, no matter how utterly, desperately, selfishly he wanted to cling to it. 

He opened his mouth. Wrathion’s lips curled into a smirk and he brushed his finger along the line of his jaw, nudging his chin down until their eyes were locked. 

“My dear king, I didn’t wait four thousand years for this moment only to turn and leave you behind. I am here to stay, with you, forever. It was my dying wish to be reunited with you, and I am pleased to see the Arbiter has made good on her promise.”

Anduin’s lips parted. The grove around him wavered, and the crimson glow of the dragon’s eyes pulled him in. Their lips met, melding together, finding their rhythm as if they’d never been parted. Four thousand years, he had said. Four thousand years, and at the end of it all, Wrathion’s final thought had been of _him._

Tangling his fingers up in his hair, he clung to him. Wrathion’s hands found his waist and guided him back towards the tree. Anduin fit himself between its exposed roots, and Wrathion between his bent haunches, and they kissed, and held, and murmured affections, knowing nothing would ever part them again. 

After a time, Wrathion rested his head against his chest and turned his attention to the grove. The twinkling stars overhead caught on his sharp, white teeth. He snickered and ran his finger along the sylvar’s furry forearm. 

“But really, Anduin, did it have to be _gardening?_ ”

“What’s wrong with gardening?” Anduin countered, smoothing his palm down the dragon’s beard. 

“Oh, nothing, of course. It’s just that I had quite enough of it keeping the weeds off your grave.”

“Is that so?” Anduin snorted. His lips spread into an even wider smile. “Well, then, I guess that makes you an expert.”

“Intermediate, at least.” Wrathion laughed against the curve of his throat. “Though I’d hardly call it one of my finer skills.”

“I’m sure the faeries would love if you sewed them dresses. Maybe they’d even let you play a dragon in one of their shows.”

“Is that so?” Wrathion draped his arms over Anduin’s shoulders and nuzzled into his embrace. He exhaled, warm against Anduin’s skin, and the hair beneath Anduin’s fingers parted for four horns to emerge and curl off the back of his head.

The sylvar quirked a brow. Wrathion returned the look with a dazzling smile, ruffling his thick locks to get them back into place. “That, I believe, I can handle. It’s as if I were made for the role!”

Laughing, Anduin claimed his grin in another long kiss. They slid down the tree and rested together between its roots. After a time, Wrathion shifted into his true form and curled up in the middle of the clearing. Crawling up against his lower abdomen, the sylvar tucked his hooves beneath him, rested his head against the dragon’s heart, and followed his gaze to the star-speckled sky.


End file.
